Prolific Producer and Provacateur Gavin Polone Lists L.A. Compound

SELLER: Gavin Polone
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $15,900,000
SIZE: 4,750 square feet, 4 bedrooms, 5.5 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Yesterday, while Your Mama and our long-bodied bitches, Linda and Beverly, waited out a particularly scorching afternoon in the comfort of a blissfully air conditioned house, we combed through some of the newer real estate listings in Tinseltown's posh and pricey Platinum Triangle and turned up a multi-acre mini-compound perched privately on a curved ridge line high above Beverly Hills, CA this is now available on the open market with a plump, $15,900,000 price tag.

A quick scan of the public property records reveals the owner of the gated estate is the sassy, brassy, smart and savvy television and film producer Gavin Polone. Mister Polone may not be a household name in Pensacola or Kalamazoo but, children, he's absolutely a well-known entertainment industry veteran who's bumped around Hollywood since the late 1990s.

In addition to his (no-doubt lucrative) executive producer credits on a couple of successful boob-toob programs like the quirky comedy sitcom Curb Your Enthusiasm and the single mother prime time soap story Gilmore Girls, Mister Polone also executive produced a handful or two of much less successful programs (Jane By Design, My Boys, The Showbiz Show with David Spade, Hack) as well as a scary slew of schlocky, made-for-TV movies (Life at Five Feet, The Angriest Man in Suburbia, and Backyards and Bullets). Along the way Mister Polone also executive produced a few pictures for the big screen that include Zombieland, Panic Room with Jodie Foster and the star-studded mockumentary flop Drop Dead Gorgeous.

In 2011 Mister Polone received the 7th of his eight Emmy nominations for the made-for-TV movie Cinema Verite, a fictionalized drama about the production of the ground-breaking,1973 television mini-series An American Family.* His seven other Emmy nods—none of which resulted in wins—were all for Curb Your Enthusiasm. Alas, Mister Polone has always been an Emmy bridesmaid and never a bride.

A recent profile and interview of Mister Polone by Patrick Goldstein in the L.A. Times—or maybe it only appeared on the L.A. Times blog, we're not actually sure—described him as "prickly, whip-smart, wickedly funny, fiercely libertarian and never shy about sharing his contrarian views about the entertainment business." The article goes on to say that the unflinchingly Mister Polone will—and does—fearlessly "bite the hand that feeds, taking on many of the sacred cows of showbiz" in his must-read weekly column for New York magazine's sprawling arts and culture website Vulture.

Property records are a wee bit perplexing—or maybe we're just too pie-eyed to parse them—and indicate that Mister Polone picked up the three parcels that comprise the 2.32 acre compound in more than one transaction sometime in 1998, 1999 and/or maybe early 2000 for a not-quite-clear amount of money. Whatever he paid, a dozen or more pre-bubble years ago, for the trio of contiguous properties—tucked privately behind gates at the tail end of a quiet cul-de-sac at the tippy top of the trendy and terrifically expensive Trousdale Estates—Your Mama thinks it's probably pretty safe to say it was a mere fraction of its nearly 16-millon smacker asking price.

The low-slung, single-story main house sits on the largest of the three parcels and, according to property records and current listing information, was originally built in 1960 and looks to Your Mama like a contemporized, classic California ranch that measures 4,750 square feet with four bedrooms and four—or maybe 4.5—bathrooms.

A discreet front door leads to an expansive, open-plan main space with polished concrete floors, a fireplace and a wide bank of sliding glass doors. Low book shelves divide the sunken living room from the dining room where a deep niche is fitted with a low, floating cabinet and two rows of floating picture/art display shelves.

The sizable, if unusually-shaped kitchen has custom cabinetry that may or may not be walnut or mahogany—some with frosted glass doors—and the expected collection of top-grade, commercial-style appliances typically found in multi-million dollar residences. An adjoining breakfast room has two walls of divided windows with lush garden view.

The polished concrete floors continue into the den/family room but appear in listing photos to switch to some sort of neutral-colored carpet tile in the bedrooms. The spacious but hardly huge master suite includes a corner fireplace, direct access to the outside through sliding glass doors and a sky-lit walk-in closet with built-in cabinets and hanging racks. The attached master bathroom with double sinks, sunken soaking tub and separate shower is divided—we're sorry to say—by a full-height wall of glass brick. There are, of course, absolutely excellent uses for glass brick in certain styles of residential architecture—like, say, Streamline Moderne. But, hunnies, with all due respect to Mister Polone—who we do respect—this isn't, in Your Mama's humble and utterly meaningless opinion, one of the better uses of glass brick we've come across.

Anyhoo, the main house opens to various, terraces, broad decks that lean out over the canyon and a flat lawn are just about big and private enough for a compact game of strip croquet. A wide set of stone steps ascends from the lawn and through a cut in a mid-height hedge aligned with the slender, dark-bottom swimming pool and slightly elevated spa simply set into a flat patch of thick, green grass. At the far end of the swimming pool a striking and pleasantly symmetrical, canyon view contemporary pool-/guesthouse pavilion with clerestory windows and alternating exterior panels of wood and glass. Inside, the airy, concrete-floor space has a bathroom, kitchenette, fireplace and built-in Murphy bed. A second, gated parking area is located behind the pool-/guesthouse.

We're not privy to any intel about whatever Mister Polone's future real estate plans may be once he sells his Bev Hills compound but should the firebrand desire a significant downsize, property records show he also owns a fairly ordinary, 1,946 square foot residence—purchased in April 2009 for $1,125,000—set on a hillside above one the rugged canyons that shoot north into the Santa Monica Mountains out of the proto-suburban, convenient-to-Tinseltown community of Sherman Oaks.

*Note the the children: If you've never seen An American Family, you really should. Its nearly impossible to find a copy of the 12-episode series that first aired on PBS, but it's definitely worth the effort.

listing photos: Rodeo Realty

Paul Haggis Lists Santa Monica Mini-Manse

SELLER: Paul Haggis
LOCATION: Santa Monica, CA
PRICE: $5,250,000
SIZE: 5,690 square feet, 5 bedrooms, 7 bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Two weeks ago, the award-winning television and movie  screenwriter/producer/director Paul Haggis and his estranged, former-actress second wife Deborah Rennard quietly hoisted their long-time family home in Santa Monica, CA on the market with a $5,250,000 price tag.

We don't know a pouf from a poof, of course, but If Your Mama were the betting type—and we're not—we'd wager Big Daddy's citrus ranch up in Middle-of-Nowhere, CA that this mini-mansion in Santa Monica has lately been occupied primarily (if not exclusively) by soon-to-be second-ex-Missus Haggis, once a small-bit actress most known for her role as Texas oilman J.R. Ewing's loyal secretary on the 1980s nighttime soap story Dallas.

The couple have been amicably uncoupled for a few years now and Mister Haggis, who sired one child with Miz Rennard and three with his first wife, has reportedly been spending more time in New York City. In June 2010 the newly-single-again Showbiz scribe shelled out $3,950,000 on a 2,948 square foot loft-condo bachelor pad in SoHo with, according to listing information from the time of the purchase, 2 bedrooms, 2.5 bathrooms and monthly taxes and common charges of $5,397

A notably prolific screenwriter, Mister Haggis has toiled in the trenches of Tinseltown since the late 1970s and early 1980s when he wrote for a heavy-duty handful of campy if iconic sitcoms that include Love Boat, Diff'rent Strokes, One Day at a Time and The Facts of Life. In the late '80s Mister Haggis was awarded an Emmy for his writing work on the prime time soap story thirtysomething and in the 1990s he primarily penned tee-vee crime and law dramas (L.A. Law, EZ Streets, Walker, Texas Ranger and Family Law).

His upwardly mobile foray into the world of cinema didn't begin in earnest until the early 2000s and almost immediately resulted in the much-gushed over and award-winning movies Crash, Million Dollar Baby and Letters from Iwo Jima, all three of which earned Mister Haggis Academy Award nominations. In 2004 Mister Haggis was awarded two of the plummiest of the Oscars—both for Crash, one for Best Original Screenplay and the other for the Best Motion Picture of the Year.

His output seems to have slowed in the last few years but, let's be honest, who could blame him if he wanted to slow down and shift focus a little bit after a pretty damn spectacular, non-stop thirty year (and counting) career? Mister Haggis's more recent efforts on the small screen (The Black Donnellys) and the big screen (Quantum of Solace, The Next Three Days) have not resulted in such bell-ringing accolades and, indeed, Mister Haggis may very well be less well known the last few years for his inventive screenplays as for his daring, full-throttled, articulate and very public renunciation of Scientology.

Mister Haggis voluntarily belonged to the religious organization for nearly 35 years but bitterly parted ways with the group in 2009 and, in a eye-popping early 2011 profile in The New Yorker entitled The Apostate, unequivocally called the polemical organization "a cult." But, children, fascinating as Mister Haggis' personal story may be—and a real damn ring tailed doozy of a tale it is—it's his real estate story we're here to discuss.

Property records show Mister and soon-to-be-second-ex-Missus Haggis paid $2,618,520 for the property that current listing information indicates spans a prairie-flat, 13,000-plus square foot corner lot located less than a mile from the beach and hosts a chunky, tree-enshrouded, East Coast-y sort of grey-shingled mini-mansion with 5 bedrooms and 7 bathrooms in 5,690 square feet.

A shrub- and boxwood-lined slate walk way (which we like), passes under an small arbor (which we don't) and cuts across a verdant, shaded lawn to the front door that opens dramatically into a mostly beige, unexpectedly spacious double-height entry with gleaming wood floors and a glimmering, rich-old-lady crystal chandelier.

There are—natch—predominantly beige and decoratively traditional formal living and dining rooms, the former with a fireplace and large enough to accommodate a baby grand piano and the latter with a steeply vaulted and sky-light dotted ceiling and a wide bank of French doors to the exterior entertainment areas.

Less stiff—if equally beige—family quarters include a giant, quite bright and faintly rustic, country-style eat in kitchen. This area is neatly outfitted with more gleaming hardwood floors, crisp white raised-panel cabinetry, gray (or maybe greenish-gray) stone counter tops, commercial-style appliances, a center island snack counter, and a built-in desk where Esmerelda the housekeeper can clip coupons and keep track of the floor waxing schedule.

An adjoining breakfast room opens into the backyard, as does the cavernous family room with high-drama exposed beam ceiling and flat-screen tee-vee built in to an entertainment center with enclosed storage cabinets—for games, scented candles, various paraphernalia, etc.—and two expanses of book shelves filled with actual books. We adore the deep window seat in the corner of the room where Your Mama can imagine spending hours upon hours reading and napping but—have mercy!—did soon-to-be-ex-Missus Haggis and/or Mister Haggis ever meet a shade of beige over which they did not break out in a sweat of decorative desire? Seriously!

Listing information indicates there are three bedrooms on the lower level, one a second master suite and another probably small enough—and probably also ill-located enough—to be identified as "Guest/Maids Quarters."

The second floor can accessed by a grand staircase in the (mostly beige) front foyer that somehow manages to be both amazingly ho-hum and Scarlett O'Hara worthy, or a far more prosaic staircase in the kitchen. A loft landing with book-filled bookcases connects to a private office/study with built-in wood cabinetry and a guest bedroom with private bathroom. Finally there is the tastefully if blandly decorated primary master suite with fireplace, over-sized walk-in closet and—not at all surprisingly—a pale beige bathroom with double sinks, soaking tub and separate, glassed-in and steam-equipped shower.

Several rooms along the back of the house open though French doors to a huge, slate terrace partially shaded by a slatted pergola. The terraces steps down to a built-in outdoor kitchen/barbecue center with snack counter and ambles down again to a shaded patch of grass where one might understandably expect to find—but does not find—a swimming pool and/or spa. Five and some million bucks in Santa Monica just don't buy a millionaire what it used to, does it? There is, perhaps as some consolation, also a detached three-car garage off the alley that runs behind the property.

Although they've owned their (former) family spread in Santa Monica for a dozen years, a slow peek and poke around public property record databases reveals Mister and soon-to-be second-ex-Missus Haggis together and separately bought and sold a significant amount of property during their 12-or-so years of marriage.

In May 2012 the now-kaput couple took a loss when they sold a small condo in Chicago, IL for $191,500 that they picked up in (presumably) happier times, in June 2006, for $242,000 and in August 2008 Mister Haggis coughed up $2,365,000 for a 2,262 square foot, single-story ranch-style residence a few blocks away from the family homestead in Santa Monica that he sold in July 2010 at a considerable loss for $2,000,000.

Sometime in 2002 or 2003—depending on where online one looks, and along with another non-celebrity couple, Mister Haggis acquired a pair of petite and charming if somewhat nondescript, side-by-side residences in Clearwater, FL that at some point he came to own on his own. Clearwater is, of course, the official headquarters of the Church of Scientology Corporation where acolytes of the secretive and frequently controversial religious organization travel to get audited—or whatever—at a non-contiguous campus that Scientologists reverently refer to as Flag Land Base. Mister Haggis may have left the church but is yet, according to property records we peeped, to unload his Clearwater cribs.

In June 2000 they took in $2,129,000 when they sold a 3,568 square foot house in Santa Monica they'd purchased just a couple years earlier for an unknown amount and about the same time in 2000 that they bought the Santa Monica mini-manse now on the market for $5,250,000, Mister and Missus Haggis also scooped up a vacant, ocean-view residential parcel in Pacific Palisades that they did not develop and sold in 2008 for undisclosed amounts.

listing photos: Prudential California Realtors

Sheryl Crow Lists California Compound

SELLER: Sheryl Crow
LOCATION: Los Angeles, CA
PRICE: $15,950,000
SIZE: 11 acres, 3 houses

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: It looks like the Grammy winning singer-songwriter is leaving Los Angeles, or at least she wants to sell her gated 11-acre compound in the Hollywood Hills that was just listed as a "private celebrity compound" with an asking price of $15,950,000.*

Listing information shows the multi-parcel property is comprised of three houses (above) that include a remodeled and restored 1925 Spanish Revival main house with 4 bedrooms, 3.5 bathrooms plus a double-height foyer, step-down living room with fireplace and high beamed ceiling, formal dining room with vintage floor tiles. There's also an intimately scaled library with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, and a half-vintage 1950s/half modernized eat-in kitchen with adjoining family room area.

A Brazilian Ironwood bridge (above, top) spans the driveway and connects the main house to a perfectly charming and meticulously restored and updated 1885 cottage with 2 bedrooms and 2 bathrooms (above, middle). Set into the hillside just above the cottage, with long views down the canyon and over the city, is a negative-edge swimming pool and spa (above, bottom) encircled by a broad sunbathing, lounging and dining decks.

 

The highest of the three residences that comprise the compound, a 1909 Craftsman with 3,335 square feet (as per property records) sits above the swimming pool complex and includes three bedrooms, large living and dining rooms—there's a wood burning fireplace in the living room—a small kitchen with restored vintage appliances and fittings, three vintage bathrooms, a small television viewing room, and another small room with an Old-Timey upright piano.

In addition to the resort-style swimming pool and spa terrace that sits high on the hill between the two guest cottages, the sprawling property includes acres of rugged and naturalistic but painstakingly maintained landscaping; scads of meandering pathways, stairways, bridges and hiking trails; a private campsite and children's play area; an authentic tee-pee; and several palapas that dot the steep hillside, at least one of which has a rope hammock and sweeping views over Tinseltown.

Miz Crow acquired the three residences in what appear in property records to be two separate transactions. The first came in February 1998 when she paid $1,800,000 for the smallest of the three parcels—just .25 acres—that includes the 5,437 square foot main house. In December of the same year she shelled out another $3,300,000 to acquire two adjacent and contiguous parcels. One parcel measures 1.2 acres with a 1,334 square foot 19th-century cottage and the other 8.87 acres with a 3,335 square foot Craftsman residence.

Miz Crow also owns a gulf-front residence on the Florida Panhandle between Pensacola and Panama City in Santa Rosa Beach, FL and a 50-plus acre spread in (suburban) Nashville, TN purchased last year for $5,225,000.

Although she's been trying to unload it for year Miz Crow is still saddled with Cross Creek Farm, a 150 (or so) acre equestrian-oriented estate in pastoral College Grove, TN. She put the farm on the market for the first time—that we know of—in May 2010 with a $7,500,000 asking price and by August 2011, after a failed auction of the property, the asking price dipped to as low as $4,500,000 but it's currently still on the open market with a $6,399,000 price tag.

*Thanks to all the children who turned Your Mama on to this listing just moments after it went live.

listing photo: Dream Home Photo for Nourmand and Associates

Stella McCartney To Sell London Bacherlorette Pad

SELLER: Stella McCartney
LOCATION: London, UK (Notting Hill)
PRICE: £2,500,000
SIZE: 1,980 square feet, 3 bedrooms, 2 full and 2 half bathrooms

YOUR MAMAS NOTES: Its not often we get to discuss a celeb-owned residence in the terrifically chic and impossibly expensive international über-capital of London where an always reliable and trusted informant—let's call him Harry Hound—tells Your Mama that PETA-friendly fashion designer and rock-n-roll scion Stella McCartney's (former) bachelorette pad in London's natty Notting Hill nabe is up for sale—and currently under offer/in escrow—with an asking price of £2,500,000.

Two-and-half million pounds maybe doesn't sound like so much moolah in the rarefied world of celebrity real estate to all us Continentals and Americanos, but according to Your Mama's hard-charging currency conversion contraption that actually works out, at today's rates, to a much more substantial sounding 3,141,770 Euros and 4,040,550 U.S. dollars.

Although Miz McCartney was born to a silver-spooned life of fame, fortune, nepotism and privileged access—her father is former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and her mother is the late photographer/activist Linda McCartney—she is not some hair-brained heiress like, say, Paris Hilton who fritters her life away with a slew of silly (albeit reasonably successful) reality tee-vee programs and a fleet of douche-y cars like horrendous, 200-and-some thousand clam Barbie-pink Bentley GT. Instead, Miz McCartney has admirably forged her own impressive, respectable and successful path as a much lauded and applauded fashion designer.

In 1997, at the dewy age of 25 and just two years after graduating from the prestigious Central St. Martins design school in London, Miz McCartney was—to predecessor Karl Lagerfeld's mild skepticism—appointed Creative Director of the venerable, high-brow Paris-based label Chloé. Four years later, in 2001, she launched her own eponymous label that now encompasses lingerie, perfume, skincare products and clothes for the kiddies. Over the years Miz McCartney has designed Madonna's wedding dress, made sporty outfits for professional tennis player Caroline Wozniacki, created successful collaboration lines with mass market retailers H&M and Target, and in 2011 she was given the Red Carpet Award by the The British Fashion Council. A staunch and vocal animal rights activist, Miz McCartney does not wear or use leather in her designs. She does, for the record, make use of sensitively harvested animal by products such as silk and wool.

In August 2003 Miz McCartney hitched her wagon to publisher turned high-end and high-design furniture purveyor Alasdhair Willis who co-founded of slick and sophisticated, late-1990s design magazine/manifesto Wallpaper* and later co-founded the design-world zeitgeist-y Established & Sons furniture and design showroom that promotes the high-end and high-style designs of contemporary British and Britain-based designers.

The newlyweds—who bought a stunning 160-acre country estate about 120 miles outside London in Bishampton, Worcestershire before they were married—reportedly moved into the Miz McCartney's bacherlorette pad on leafy, serpentine, and affluently trendy Westbourne Park Road that she purchased, according an un-sourced report on the internets, in the late 1990s for around £695,000.

The stylish and savvy couple quickly began to procreate—they have four little ones now—and in 2007 dropped £4,750,000 on a pair of adjoining, down-on-their-heels Notting Hills Gate properties with a staggering 45 bedrooms and previously used as some sort of rooming house or hostel. Miz McCartney and Mister Willis reportedly converted the run-down buildings back to two single family homes, sold off one and moved into the other that's been reported to now include five bedrooms, a library, gym, home theater and, possibly, a swimming pool in the basement.

No longer in need of her Notthing Hill bachelorette pad turned family homestead, it went up for sale some time ago, according to our man on the ground, Harry Hound, for £3,000,000 before the price was lowered to it's last asking price of £2,500,000.

Current listing information and marketing materials show the unassuming yet gleaming, dove-gray stucco townhouse-type residence spans a relatively modest 1,980 square feet over four floors with a total of three bedrooms and two full and two half bathrooms.

A wee, gated garden and slender stoop lead to the parlor-level entrance/stair hall and double reception room that stretches from a wide, street-side bay window with original shutters clear though to a large window at the back with verdant garden view. There are original—or at least antique-looking—hardwood floors that carry the pits and pockmarks of previous residents, a pair of period fireplaces and exposed radiators, built-in cupboards and two banks of floor-to-ceiling floating glass shelves that give the otherwise Old-School space(s) a sleek, modern twist. Eagle-eyed children will have already noted a convenient but privately situated and properly ventilated half-pooper tucked behind the stair landing.

Down below, in the half-subterranean lower ground floor,  the large dining/family room has a second, under-the-stoop entry for deliveries, domestics and dirty dogs and a second, also convenient but privately situated and properly ventilated half-bathroom with direct back garden access. The compact but well-equipped galley-style kitchen has blond hardwood floors, crisp, white Shaker-style cabinetry, butcher block counter tops, and snow-white subway tile back splashes. French doors connect to the terraced and planted rear garden where a circular picnic bench was playfully custom-built around a skinny tree trunk on the upper level.

Two guest/family bedrooms on the second floor each have fireplaces flanked by built in wardrobes and share a split, hall bathroom. The loft-like master suite occupies the entire top floor and includes a completely open-plan bathroom that lacks any real privacy from the rest of the room. It does not appear in the floor plan that there are any actual closets or wardrobes in the master bedroom, which is on obvious problem for obvious reason, but there is direct and private access to a glassed in galled and tiny terrace on the roof.

listing photos and floor plan: Bective Leslie March